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ZH was talking about coronavirus way earlier than anyone else, which is bound to happen if you don’t validate as well—sometimes you do strike gold. A comment I

ZH was talking about coronavirus way earlier than anyone else, which is bound to happen if you don’t validate as well—sometimes you do strike gold. A comment I saw once about them was “ZH has reported five of the last three catastrophes”.

duxup 6y ago
"ZH was talking about coronavirus way earlier than anyone else" I've seen that claim too and found it questionable. Almost every major news outlet that would cover international news I found had some story about coronavirus pretty dang early. It wasn't a breathless story predicting the impact, but they covered it. I feel like most media "media does this" or "didn't do that" is mostly just what passed in front of someone's nose. Purely anecdotal experience of mine was a reddit story ages ago that was "The Media is too busy covering X to cover this story Y." Purely out of curiosity I turned around and flipped on the TV and checked the news channels. The first 3 news channels, 2 were covering Y... but the claims about nobody covering it were constant.
- selectodude 6y ago
  ZH was saying that it was going to be a catastrophe before China even started lying about how they had it under control.
  - CptFribble 6y ago
    To be fair, almost everything on ZH is predicting catastrophe - ZH is rife with prepper-flavored "this is the big one" reports on things like FEMA operations, rumors of potential false flag attacks, and of course various financial instrument movements. 99% of what ZH says is the end of all things fades into nothingness. ZH is the canonical example of a correct-twice-daily broken clock.
    - humaniania 6y ago
      Exactly this! Thank you. ZeroHedge almost seems to be designed to induce anxiety and spread disinformation.
      - rbanffy 6y ago
        If it was not designed that way, there's certainly an incentive for that behavior to evolve. The question is if we want to prevent all news sources from evolving into that.
      - srtjstjsj 6y ago
        It does what it says on the tin -- zero hedge.
    - selectodude 6y ago
      Oh for sure. They’re a bunch of lunatics. If you assume the worst four times a day you’re going to be correct sooner or later.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    > China even started lying about how they had it under control. If you think China was lying about it, you should see the public statements of checks notes every head of state in the West.
    - duxup 6y ago
      Outside of Trump... i'm not aware of any large scale deception or ... just plain ignorance when it comes to trump.
      - whimsicalism 6y ago
        Britain said that they could go for a "herd immunity strategy", several European governments said that masks were not useful for ordinary people, claims that the virus was under control, even people saying "don't stop going to bars", entire governments deciding to stop releasing information about cases, etc., etc. There was a whole lot that people didn't know, especially early. There were quite a few failures of communication and delays. China was certainly communicating warnings about the virus by early January.
        turkey99 6y ago
        They were wrong, potentially and have adjusted their stance since. They’re still poorly managing it because they lack decent information. I’d argue it’s the fault of the civil service that they’ve been crippling and obvious cronyism (e.g. Dido Harding) not equipped to provide decent information that they need for decision making.
        whimsicalism 6y ago
        > They were wrong, potentially and have adjusted their stance since. Yes, and there is a period between where they realize they are wrong, where they reformulate their message and then communicate that publicly. What we're discussing here is a similar gap of 2-4 days between evidence of person-to-person spread and communication. Meanwhile, we have no idea when the US president even first tested positive for covid.
- ColanR 6y ago
  The difference is, most news outlets were spending their time saying the coronavirus was less severe than the flu.
  - duxup 6y ago
    "most news outlets were spending their time saying the coronavirus was less severe than the flu" I don't recall many news outlets putting out official positions...
hourislate 6y ago
4Chan is light years ahead of ZH and the rest. There were posts that were so eerily accurate about the virus late Dec into the first couple of weeks of January it was freakish. People like to write off 4Chan for all the shit posting and racism, etc. But if you can ignore all that there are truly some amazing Gems to be found.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  Source on the late December? Early January is irrelevant, but I would like to see the former if that is a true claim.
  - taylorfinley 6y ago
    The closest I could find in online archives to a December 2019 pandemic discussion on 4chan was this single (terribly racist and cruel) comment from December 30th[0], "Don't worry. The worlds going to suffer a global pandemic soon (very, very, soon) which will wipe out poor urban populations..." [0] https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/237746333/#q237746818 https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/237746333/#q237746818 (Warning, this link contains graphic hate speech like much of 4chan does and is not suitable for human consumption.)
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      As expected.
  - taylorfinley 6y ago
    There is also this October 2019 thread [0] which mentions a coronavirus-like bioweapon, which, like the "High Incident Project" thread [1] (covered by snopes here [2]) is often pointed to by conspiracy theorists as examples of insiders leaking information on 4chan before events of global significance. In my analysis I find these are examples of fitting events to predictions after the fact; the huge number of 'larp' threads on conspiracy forums allows for cherry-picking examples where some content later rhymed with reality. [0] https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/230585890/#q230593401 https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/230585890/#q230593401 [1] https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/141096258/#141102703 https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/141096258/#141102703 [2] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/4chan-user-prediction-las-vegas-shooting/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/4chan-user-prediction-las-...
stjohnswarts 6y ago
It also serves to amplify a lot of fake stories without doing any research to confirm if there is any proof of said stories.

duxup 6y ago

"ZH was talking about coronavirus way earlier than anyone else" I've seen that claim too and found it questionable. Almost every major news outlet that would cover international news I found had some story about coronavirus pretty dang early. It wasn't a breathless story predicting the impact, but they covered it. I feel like most media "media does this" or "didn't do that" is mostly just what passed in front of someone's nose. Purely anecdotal experience of mine was a reddit story ages ago that was "The Media is too busy covering X to cover this story Y." Purely out of curiosity I turned around and flipped on the TV and checked the news channels. The first 3 news channels, 2 were covering Y... but the claims about nobody covering it were constant.

selectodude 6y ago
ZH was saying that it was going to be a catastrophe before China even started lying about how they had it under control.
- CptFribble 6y ago
  To be fair, almost everything on ZH is predicting catastrophe - ZH is rife with prepper-flavored "this is the big one" reports on things like FEMA operations, rumors of potential false flag attacks, and of course various financial instrument movements. 99% of what ZH says is the end of all things fades into nothingness. ZH is the canonical example of a correct-twice-daily broken clock.
  - humaniania 6y ago
    Exactly this! Thank you. ZeroHedge almost seems to be designed to induce anxiety and spread disinformation.
    - rbanffy 6y ago
      If it was not designed that way, there's certainly an incentive for that behavior to evolve. The question is if we want to prevent all news sources from evolving into that.
    - srtjstjsj 6y ago
      It does what it says on the tin -- zero hedge.
  - selectodude 6y ago
    Oh for sure. They’re a bunch of lunatics. If you assume the worst four times a day you’re going to be correct sooner or later.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  > China even started lying about how they had it under control. If you think China was lying about it, you should see the public statements of checks notes every head of state in the West.
  - duxup 6y ago
    Outside of Trump... i'm not aware of any large scale deception or ... just plain ignorance when it comes to trump.
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      Britain said that they could go for a "herd immunity strategy", several European governments said that masks were not useful for ordinary people, claims that the virus was under control, even people saying "don't stop going to bars", entire governments deciding to stop releasing information about cases, etc., etc. There was a whole lot that people didn't know, especially early. There were quite a few failures of communication and delays. China was certainly communicating warnings about the virus by early January.
      - turkey99 6y ago
        They were wrong, potentially and have adjusted their stance since. They’re still poorly managing it because they lack decent information. I’d argue it’s the fault of the civil service that they’ve been crippling and obvious cronyism (e.g. Dido Harding) not equipped to provide decent information that they need for decision making.
        whimsicalism 6y ago
        > They were wrong, potentially and have adjusted their stance since. Yes, and there is a period between where they realize they are wrong, where they reformulate their message and then communicate that publicly. What we're discussing here is a similar gap of 2-4 days between evidence of person-to-person spread and communication. Meanwhile, we have no idea when the US president even first tested positive for covid.
ColanR 6y ago
The difference is, most news outlets were spending their time saying the coronavirus was less severe than the flu.
- duxup 6y ago
  "most news outlets were spending their time saying the coronavirus was less severe than the flu" I don't recall many news outlets putting out official positions...

hourislate 6y ago

4Chan is light years ahead of ZH and the rest. There were posts that were so eerily accurate about the virus late Dec into the first couple of weeks of January it was freakish. People like to write off 4Chan for all the shit posting and racism, etc. But if you can ignore all that there are truly some amazing Gems to be found.

whimsicalism 6y ago
Source on the late December? Early January is irrelevant, but I would like to see the former if that is a true claim.
- taylorfinley 6y ago
  The closest I could find in online archives to a December 2019 pandemic discussion on 4chan was this single (terribly racist and cruel) comment from December 30th[0], "Don't worry. The worlds going to suffer a global pandemic soon (very, very, soon) which will wipe out poor urban populations..." [0] https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/237746333/#q237746818 https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/237746333/#q237746818 (Warning, this link contains graphic hate speech like much of 4chan does and is not suitable for human consumption.)
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    As expected.
- taylorfinley 6y ago
  There is also this October 2019 thread [0] which mentions a coronavirus-like bioweapon, which, like the "High Incident Project" thread [1] (covered by snopes here [2]) is often pointed to by conspiracy theorists as examples of insiders leaking information on 4chan before events of global significance. In my analysis I find these are examples of fitting events to predictions after the fact; the huge number of 'larp' threads on conspiracy forums allows for cherry-picking examples where some content later rhymed with reality. [0] https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/230585890/#q230593401 https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/230585890/#q230593401 [1] https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/141096258/#141102703 https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/141096258/#141102703 [2] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/4chan-user-prediction-las-vegas-shooting/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/4chan-user-prediction-las-...

stjohnswarts 6y ago

It also serves to amplify a lot of fake stories without doing any research to confirm if there is any proof of said stories.